Corner of your heart
by MissForsythe
Summary: She should remember, she wants to remember, but they won't let her.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Corner of your heart  
>Author: MissForsythe<p>

Rating: Nothing too smutty or offensive.  
>Disclaimer: not mine<br>Notes: Can you really completely delete a person from existing? Can you delete them from your heart?

The Observer watches as the blonde woman wanders around the grocery store, idly picking up items and putting them back. He's seen her doing this so many times. As though she's expecting to hear someone say which brand of mustard to buy, or that she really doesn't need that much milk. Sometimes she'll cock her head and look over her shoulder, as if she's expecting him there.

Olivia Dunham knows that she's forgotten something. But she can't remember for the life of her what. It's not the same feeling as when she's forgotten her umbrella or forgotten one of Ella's school plays. It's deeper then that. If she didn't know any better, she'd think it's guilt. Sometimes, when she hears the next door neighbour play the piano, she can almost remember, but then he stops playing. The neighbour never plays long enough for the imagery to become clear. One time, she was so close, and she wound up curled in a ball against the couch, angry and crying. Sometimes, in her dream, she sees a cow in a laboratory and laying in water in the dark. The flash of light that follows is so bright she thinks that she'll be blinded permanently. But for some reason, she feels safe. There are two strong arms pulling her out of the water and holding her close.

_I'm here_.

Then she wakes up to the darkness, but the voice follows her throughout the day, sometimes until only some really strong medicine manages to drown it out.

There's a scarf in her closet, a silk one. She has no idea where it came from. If she tries, she can pretend that it belongs to Rachel and that it was left behind during one of her visits. But when runs her fingers across the smooth silk, she knows that It doesn't. It's her scarf, it was a gift. She vaguely remembers a sunny morning in April, perhaps at Easter. Again, the association never brings forth the whole picture, but she knows that she got it from a lover.

_"Pretty girls should have pretty scarves."_

She's fascinated with the history of Dr. Bishop and Dr. Bell. The Mad Scientists, as the media dub them. They're an odd looking pair, and she thinks they look the part perfectly. But it's Dr. Bishop she's most interested in. Perhaps because he has that haunted look in his eyes, as though he suffered a great loss. She went to see him speak at a medical conference last winter, he spent the first half of his speech talking about separate universes, and the other about his experiences with LSD. And yet, when he was escorted off stage, she saw him looking for someone in the audience. It took her a minute to realise that he was looking right at her.

Sometimes she thinks of mundane things, all of which are hidden in the corner of her heart. Car rides in a vintage Chevy, bacon and eggs on Sunday morning, a blue shirt that smells of aftershave and something else she can't define. Small memories of a person she thinks she should remember, but can't. Not even if she would find a cow in a laboratory or if she cross examined Dr. Bishop to find out if he has indeed lost someone important.

The observers sit in a café near Olivia Dunhams house, and watch as she and her niece walk down the street.

_I think we underestimated something_.

The youngest Observer looks up from his coffee, not understanding what could have possibly gone wrong with what was pre destined. It started with Peter, and by taking his existence, a compromise was made. But when he sees the photographs of Olivia looking over her shoulder, wearing the scarf and attending a medical convention, he realises that humans really do value love over everything else. Because it can be tenacious, and in Olivia Dunhams case, it can never be fully erased.

_The lock is intact, is it not?__  
><em>  
>The Observer stares out the window, and he does something that he's seen humans do, but has never tried himself. He lies.<p>

_It is intact_.

He knows that a mistake has been made, albeit a subconscious one. The lock is not intact, and he knows that it won't be long before they figure out how to open it, as they always do.

_Please leave a review on the way out, thank you._


	2. Back of your head

Title: Back of your head

Author: MissForsythe

Disclaimer: not mine

Summary: second part in an untitled series, Walter pov.

**Please leave a review on the way out, thank you.**

Walter Bishop is not a man to believe in may have beens.

He's a scientist, and scientists believe in what they see. He's forgotten when he first broke that rule, rendering him an outcast among his peers. He is good at what he does, there's no question about it, but he feels he can be better at something he's not doing.

He shuffles into the empty apartment, full of books and long forgotten take out containers. He sits in his easy chair and stares at the picture of his late wife. It's been two years and five months now, when God finally decided that she'd suffered enough and took her away. Her final words still resound in the back of his head, screaming even when he drops enough acid.

_"Peter, his name is Peter"__  
><em>  
>He's always liked the name, and campaigned for it in that long winter of '77, when they finally decided that the time was right. One part after Peter Pan, one part after her brother that died long ago. When he tries hard enough, he can envision his son. A beautiful baby, a vivacious toddler and child, a sullen teenager. A handsome man. Brown hair and blue eyes, tall and strong. He sees him with a blonde woman, sitting on the deck on a sunny Easter Sunday morning.<p>

_"Pretty girls deserve pretty scarves"_

He never actually expected her to be in the audience today. She looks haunted, like she's missing something that's right in front of her. She wore the scarf from the dream, the one with the birds and the red trim. His eye was immediately drawn to it, before moving up to see her face. It took her a minute to realise he was staring right at her, and her face went from wonder to shock. He imagines that seeing a ghost invokes the same reaction.

He leans back and stares at the snow falling outside.

The Observer stands across the street from Dr. Bishops apartment building, not in the least bothered with the rapidly falling snow. He writes something in his notebook, before looking up at the window one last time and walking away. Humans are strange creatures, he thinks, and then he realises that they really can remember everything if they try. Even things that were carefully locked and hidden in the backroom of their head. He lied yesterday, about the lock which is not fool proof anymore, and tonight, he's convinced that they have indeed underestimated the strength of human relationships.


	3. Depth of your soul

Title: Depth of your soul  
>Disclaimer: not mine<br>Summary: Third part in an untitled series, Peter pov

Enjoy the story, please review. thank you.

Not existing is easy, Peter thinks. He can go anywhere, do anything and no one will ever know.

It confused him at first, Olivia not responding, Walter not asking for his help. The Observers told him that this was best, that this was a compromise for things that shouldn't happen. He was locked in a white room, with no door and no windows, and he was very convinced that this was what going mad feels like. Then he woke up on a grass field in a park, no one seemed to notice. The first thing he did was jump the turnstile and head towards the house he shared with Walter. Only the find that another family lived there.

He stood outside of Olivia's apartment in the rain, waiting. But she never came.

One morning he woke up in an unfamiliar apartment, on a cold kitchen floor. He heard the sound of shuffling feet coming towards him, and for one second he'd hoped that today would be that day. Then he heard a glass breaking and the shuffling got more anxious.

He could hear Walter on the phone, and by the tone of his voice, he knew that it was serious. Taking the chance that he wouldn't be seen, he headed towards the bedroom. He found his mother lying motionless on the floor. He knelt beside her, and to his surprise, her eyes seemed to focus on him. When he heard the shuffling feet approach, he told her his name, that he was their son and that she had to hang on. He backed away as Walter entered the room and held on to her for dear life. She mumbled something to him, and then there was that look in his eyes. Like she'd just told him a grand secret she'd been waiting years to tell him.

_"Peter, his name is Peter" ___

_._Peter then felt a chill and before he knew it, he was back in the white screamed until he felt his lungs collapsing in anguish.

The next time it happened, he woke up on the corner of the street where they used to live.

He stood on the porch, watching himself set a table on the deck. He remembered it as Easter Sunday morning. It had been a glorious sunny day, and he'd had it all planned out weeks in advance. After he'd finally organised everything as he wanted, he called for Olivia, and he's sure that she can hear him gasping out when she appears. That sundress. The one she thought was too bright and too sunny and too everything. It's absolutely stunning, and he swears that if he ever wakes from this nightmare, he'll buy her all the sundresses he can find. They eat in comfortable silence, until she notices that he's up to something. He brings out dessert, two chocolate muffins and a small box. He presents it to her, and he almost dies when she smiles at him like that. They move to the porch swing, and she leans against him while opening the box. She holds up the scarf to admire the the pattern of birds and ivy and silk stitching at the edges.

_"Pretty girls deserve pretty scarves"__  
><em>  
>The chill comes too fast and the white room is too bright. In the depth of his soul, he replays that moment over and over again, until it explodes in a flurry of yellow and red and birds and ivy.<p>

The third time they sent him back into the world without him, he winds up in a banquet hall. Walters face is plastered on a big banner hanging from the landing, and people mill around him, drinking and laughing. Then he sees her, looking a little weary, as if she's not quite sure why she came here in the first place. Somewhere, a bell is rung and people are asked to take their seats. She chooses a seat at the back, and he sits down in the empty chair beside her. Walter is on stage, giving a lecture on alternate universes. Or the possibility of them. Peter chuckled at that, but then he noticed that Walter had gone quiet and was scanning the crowd. Almost instinctively, he straighens himself and waits for the speech to go on. But it doesn't. Walter all of the sudden starts in about LSD and the best way to fabricate it at home. The crowd looks shocked, and only when he talks about using it in the finger food at the reception, that the guards intervene. Before he disappears, he looks over his shoulder one last time and it's then that Peter realises he's looking straight at them. At Olivia.

The chill comes, and the last thing he's able to do is reach out and touch the silk scarf she's wearing, barely brushing it with his fingertips.

The Observer watches Peter as he writhes in the white room, his face red with anger and sadness. He is fascinated with human emotions, how they are able to experience them, sometimes more then one at a time. They did the right thing, he tells himself. It's what they told Peter over and over again, until they themselves believed it. He enters Peters head, and hears his flurry of thoughts. It's scrambled, but there is one sentence that stands out among all the others.

_"I want to exist."_


End file.
